


A Warrior's Secret

by Ludovica



Series: Muscle over Magic [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon Divergence - fucking around with classes, Gen, Malcolm Hawke mentioned, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2353145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludovica/pseuds/Ludovica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke has a secret. Anders finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Warrior's Secret

“Knock knock,” Hawke called as she walked into Anders’ clinic. She looked around for a second – the smell of blood and vomit had already been assaulting her nose before she had even reached the doors, but she couldn’t see any patients in the room.

What she could see was blood and… other stuff next to one of the cots. Well…

She gave the cot a wide berth as she strode to where Anders was leaning over a little notebook. He looked up when he heard the steps of her heavy boots on the dirt floor. Something about his look was strange – he looked at her as if he didn’t recognize her at first, completely absent-minded, until he finally blinked and straightened.

“Hawke,” he greeted her; then, finally, a little smile appeared on his lips. “I’ve only been gone for two hours. Are you already missing me?”

Hawke grinned back at him. Anders had been called away from a job in Lowtown – very likely to take care of whoever had left that nice puddle below the cot – just two hours ago, that was true; but two hours were absolutely enough for Hawke to hurt herself bad enough to need the help of her trusted healer.

She took off her trusty Rebel Queen with her left hand and leaned the maul against one of the many crates littered throughout the clinic, before she took off her right vanguard and rolled up her sleeve. The blood from the slash wound had soaked her shirt, but it had already started to crust. The color was pretty normal too, but it was also far too early for any infection to show.

“Could you help me with this?” she asked Anders with a cheerful grin. She knew that she shouldn’t be getting used to this sort of injury, but hell, she’d spent the last few months as a mercenary, this was by far not the worst wound Anders had healed for her.

Anders frowned at the wound nevertheless while he gently rolled the sleeve up farther. “I’m not with you for two hours, and you nearly get your hand chopped off… I really don’t want to know what you’d do without me.”

She hissed slightly when he took her hand and moved her arm a little. “I’d likely be lying in one ditch and my limbs in another,” she quipped, before she closed her eyes so she’d not have to watch his magic close her wound. She didn’t quite know why, but the sight of wounds growing shut made her feel far queasier than smashing people’s limbs or heads with her Rebel Queen ever had. It didn’t really hurt – not a lot at least – and the pin-prickling of Anders’ magic faded soon enough. When she opened her eyes, her arm was as good as new.

Again a grin spread on her lips. “You are truly an angel, Anders. Me and the twins are planning to join Bella and Varric for a drink or three. And looking at this mess,” she gestured towards the ominous puddle, “you could stand to get drunk too. Like to come?”

Anders frowned at her. She frowned back, mainly because Anders really had no reason to frown here.

Had she done something wrong?

“I didn’t miss your birthday, did I?” she asked lightly, despite the strange feeling of dread that was building in her stomach. Though that might also be some reaction to the wound, who knew.

Anders leaned against the column next to him and crossed his arms in front of his chest. His expression was absolutely untypical for him – he wasn’t just frowning, he was scowling. He was looking at her as if she had just said something nice about the templars.

“Anders, what is going on?” Now she just couldn’t keep the tension out of her voice.

They were alone in the clinic, but she could still see Anders’ eyes flick around as if to make sure that that hadn’t changed in the last two seconds. Then he looked Hawke straight in the eye again.

“When we were fighting those Coterie goons earlier…” he started, and Hawke immediately felt the dread in her stomach intensify, “…I saw how you ran over to Bethany, when she was downed by that other mage. I saw you picking up her staff…” He paused, and Hawke felt the last remnants of her usual grin slip from her lips.

“…and using it.”

Silence followed his words, such a deep, all-consuming silence that Hawke could swear that even the sea was holding its breath. She felt her teeth clench, her fingers curling into fists. Yet she settled back; she put her weight onto her heels, and crossed her arms in front of her chest, mirroring his posture.

“I really don’t think that this is the place to talk about something like this,” she hissed.

Anders frowned again. The deep line between his eyebrows made him look old, worn. “And where do you think would be the ‘right’ place then?”

Hawke ran a hand through her short hair, mussing it up in the process. “I’ll tell the twins that I’ll join them at the Hanged Man later, then we can talk at home. Gamlen will be at one of his usual spots, and mother knows, and will likely go to sleep right after sundown anyway. Just… Come a while after dusk, and I’ll… explain.”

Anders looked at her for a few moments, then he nodded. Hawke opened her mouth again to say something – but since she really didn’t know what she wanted to say, she closed her mouth again and turned around to leave the clinic.

~*~

Gamlen’s house was oddly quiet. Usually Hawke went where her siblings went, so when she was at home, her siblings were too, but now that Gamlen and the twins were gone and her mother had retreated into her bedroom, the only noises that could be heard were the din of the streets and the occasional soft creaking of the wooden floor. Hawke was sitting in the bedroom she shared with her siblings, on one of the wooden chairs that looked as if they would break down at any moment, her legs stretched out and an open bottle of wine on the table next to her (which she had pilfered from Fenris, by his leave of course). If she couldn’t join her siblings and friends drinking, at least she could get herself a little warmed up before she’d have to share one of her best-hidden, most painful secrets with Anders. Of course, it would have been a lot worse if Fenris had been the one finding out about her secret (she was half sure that she wouldn’t actually survive this sort of revelation), but Andraste’s tits, Anders wasn’t that much more liberal in his views, was he? He was just on the opposite end of the mages-yay-or-nay-scale.

She was just working her way through the second third of the wine when somebody knocked at the door. It was strangely hard to get to her feet; it couldn’t be the wine, not really, but it still felt as if something was pulling her back onto her chair when she tried to stand up. She huffed, then she pushed herself off the chair with all the determination she could muster. There was no way to avoid this conversation. Anders was their healer. They needed him.

Well, at least if they didn’t want to be completely dependent on Bethany’s less than mediocre creation magic.

The door opened to the cool, stinking night air of Lowtown and Anders’ stern face. Hawke couldn’t stand Anders’ stern face. She needed him to grin or smile or look concerned or even angry, but not… not this. Still, she didn’t say a word, just let him into the house and closed the door behind him.

Then she led him back into their room and closed the door there as well.

“My mother is asleep, so please try to keep your voice down,” she said as she sat down on the table again, picking up the bottle and gesturing to the other chair with it before she took a swig.

“You hang around that recluse elf too much,” he commented dryly as he sat down on the chair on the other side of the table, and again he crossed his arms in front of his chest, looking at her. She could feel her teeth clench as she put the bottle down and turned slightly to the side, so that she was facing the door instead off Anders.

“So…” Anders started. Of course he started. Some people just couldn’t appreciate awkward silences. “You… are a mage.”

She had been ready to face the anger in his voice. She had thought that this would be what she would find there, anger and resentment because she had lied to him – if only by omission. But while there was a slip of anger alright, there was something else, something Hawke should have tried to prepare herself for but had failed to, and now this something else was gnawing at her conscience. He sounded hurt – betrayed. And most of all, disappointed.

Hawke wasn’t used to disappointing people. She wasn’t used to letting people down.

She started to gnaw on her lower lip while she tried to form a coherent answer in her head. Finally, she gave up and let out a huff of air before she reached for the bottle again and took another sip.

“I’m… I’m able to use magic, yes.” She couldn’t get herself to just agree to his claim that she was a mage, with all the implications this one tiny word carried. She let the lip of the bottle click against her teeth in a nervous gesture to get herself a few more moments to think, then she lowered her hand. She didn’t put the bottle back onto the table though.

“See, as it is, me and Bethany both showed our talent at the same time. My father says that we likely… cross-triggered each other. I was a bit of a late bloomer,” she smiled sardonically, “and Bethany was so young that she…”

She paused, and shook her head. For a second she closed her eyes. “You need to promise me something, Anders. I know you will likely fucking hate me once we are through here. But you must not tell anybody about what I’m telling you here. Nobody. My mother knows, but I really don’t think the twins do.” She stared at the wine bottle. She had been lying for so long – now that she was trying to tell somebody about the one thing that had been a thorn in her side for ages, she didn’t know how to even… what to say first, what to say later, how to express herself, how to explain herself…

Anders didn’t say anything. Hawke didn’t look at Anders; she just took his silence as a sign to continue.

“I was old enough to know why my father was always vigilant and tense. Why we kept moving around. We only settled in Lothering when I was fifteen, you know… Whenever there was any trace of templars, we were on the run again. And…” She started to run her nails over the dark glass of the bottle. “And when he caught me and Bethany stomping onto frozen puddles to make the ice crack – in the middle of summer…” (There was pressure behind her eyes. But she wouldn’t give in.) “…he looked at us as if he had just found us dead and gutted, you know. I have never… Never seen this sort of horror before. And, I mean, you know just how much horrible shit I’ve seen.” She tried to grin as she turned her face into Anders’ direction, still not looking at him properly.

She leaned forward after that, bracing her elbows on her knees, holding the bottle with both hands. “He thought it was just me, at first. Told me to step away from my sister. But that made Bethany cry so badly that she made the ground just below her quirk.” The smile that now came to her lips was genuine, but not happy. “So from one moment to the other, he had to deal with two daughters who’d inherited what he hated most about himself. He was of that variety, you know, the ‘magic is a curse’ faction.” Anders shifted on his seat. She couldn’t blame him for it. “I started hating what I could do in that very moment.”

“Nothing like a parent’s horror to make a child hate themselves, I know,” Anders said, and even though the sudden intrusion of his words startled her, his voice was gentle, understanding.

Suddenly she was overcome by the desire to hold his hand. To touch him, in any way, really. She didn’t even need to look at him, just the knowledge that he was there, the gentle noise of his breathing, made her crave to feel his warmth, his firmness more than she had craved anything in a long time. Anders was offering understanding, support, she knew that; but she was afraid that there was a prize to it. To him. She was telling him her secret, yes; but she did not want to change anything about herself just because of it. She was what she wanted to be. Or at least, she was living in the least painful way she could.

She continued.

“Father tried to teach us how to control our magic. That was the first thing – how we could cast spells purposefully, carefully. He went to the forest with us to do that. He showed us a spell – the same we had used when we had been playing, just some generic freezing – and he told us to freeze flowers. He wanted me to do it first, but…” The memories of that day were so vivid. Her father was alive in her mind; he was alive and he was trying to keep his little girls from getting themselves caught or killed. “I told him I didn’t want to do this. That I couldn’t. That I wasn’t a mage. That I had been lying – that it had been Bethany, only Bethany. Then I ran away.”

She put the lip of the bottle to her mouth, but didn’t drink. For some reason, the pressure against her lower lip made her feel calmer. The coldness of the glass seemed to help too.

“When I came home that evening, he took me out behind the house and sat me down on a pile of firewood.” It was funny, she could still remember the exact shape of a knothole right next to her head. “He told me that I did not have to practice with him and Bethany if I didn’t want to. He said that I was a smart child, and that I’d be old enough to ask for help if I needed it. Then he asked me if I didn’t maybe want to watch – if that wouldn’t be something that would be fun for me. So what happened after that night was that I would be there when father taught Bethany, and at night I’d sneak out and try the things he showed Bethany on my own. I always knew that he was following me – his shoes were warm whenever I came home…” She smiled at the memory of touching the insides of her father’s shoes. She had no idea how she had even gotten that idea, but it had turned out to be a good one, after all.

“Your father was foolish to give in to you like that,” Anders suddenly said. Hawke nearly felt her grip on the wine bottle loosen. She turned around and looked at him, startled as if he had just made lightning strike her table. The look on his face was dead serious.

“You would have needed direct instruction, not some round-about sneaky learning-by-watching. Even if he was near-by, you could have hurt yourself badly. And both you and your father let your sister believe that she was alone in her situation – have you never considered what sort of burden that must have been to her? She could have had a companion – you could have had a companion as well. A teacher should be there to guide his pupils, and a parent even more so, not to… to… to let a confused and scared child decide everything about their future education. If he had made you train with them, you might be able to do more than throw a few sparks at your opponent now. It’s a miracle that the demons haven’t gotten you yet.”

He pushed himself off of the chair and started to pace the room. Hawke put the bottle onto the table, because her fingers were clutching the glass so hard that they had started to hurt.

“You should have gotten a proper training, you should have learned how to use your magic properly – and instead, what did you do?” He gave her a pointed look up and down her body. “Lift rocks and play with swords until you could make yourself believe that you weren’t one of us?”

Hawke’s jaw tensed, her shoulders tensed, her whole body tensed. The pressure behind her eyes had wandered down, turned into pressure in her throat, her chest. Her solemn memories were forgotten as anger welled up inside of her.

“You think it was just that easy?” she asked, trying to keep her voice down. “Yeah, I’ve lifted rocks and logs and maker-damned tree trunks, I have made my father – who was a mercenary himself – give me proper weapons training, and I am glad I did.” Now she stood up too and walked towards Anders, who stood still and just stared at her. She could feel her face twist with anger.

“You think I should have spent my time and energy on learning how to cast spells, but what good would it have done me?! There is a reason why my father wielded a sword and not a damned staff himself, Anders!” Her voice was getting too loud, and she knew it, but she just couldn’t get herself to talk softer. “You would have wanted me to hone the one skill that would have gotten me nowhere if it came to the worst. If the templars attacked, what do you think how I would have protected myself, my family? You of all people should know that you can’t curse a templar. You can’t use magic against a templar. The enemies of my family, the one threat I had to live with from the moment of my _birth_ were people who’d not even be intimidated by magic! And you would have wanted me to sit around and waste my time learning how to do the one thing that would not help me against them at all?!”

She was standing right in front of Anders now, their bodies just inches apart. She was trying to intimidate him, to get him to step back, like she had intimidated so many men stronger than him before – but he didn’t even flinch, he just looked at her with those painfully calm eyes of his. Hawke wanted to punch him, to ram her fist into his unbearably stern face, but she didn’t – somehow she managed to not do it.

“Do you even have any idea at all how difficult it is to do what I have done?” she hissed into his face, her voice finally low again. “My father knew. ‘Mages are not made for fighting’, he told me, ‘but a tree is not made for swimming and yet we have boats.’ I have spent nearly fifteen years to get my body to the point it is at now, Anders. I worked and I practiced and I honed any skill that I could possibly protect my family with every day for _fifteen years_.” It was so much harder for mages than for normal people to build muscle and stamina and a warrior’s reflexes, and her father had warned her. He had told her that magic would come to her naturally; strength wouldn’t.

Anders lifted his hands and put them onto her shoulders. Gently he pushed her back, until they were an arm’s length apart. His face was still stern, and his voice sounded grave when he spoke again.

“It still was not the right decision. If I had had this sort of opportunity – to learn from my own father…” He shook his head and pulled his lips into a tight line. “I can’t understand you. You have this power – this ability to do incredible things, things that most beings can’t even dream of, and you… I just can’t understand why you would choose to ignore this part of you. You are a mage. You can’t run away from that, Hawke.”

“I’ve been faring well enough with running away, and so have you, if the stories you told me about your past are true,” she spat at him. “I’m a warrior. _That_ is what I decided that I would be. You’re all about self-determination and freedom, but the moment somebody does something you don’t approve of you preach about how ‘you can’t run away’? It is as it is, Anders, and you won’t change anything about that. This is my life. My abilities. My decision.”

She pushed his hands off her shoulders. She couldn’t even imagine that she had wanted to touch him so badly that her chest had ached for it just what, minutes ago?

“It’s going to get you, sooner or later,” he answered, then he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index. “If you don’t want to see that, fine. I’ll not force you.”

Who did he think he was, she thought, that he believed he could force her even if he wanted?

“But if you need help, come to me. I might not agree with how you decide to deal with your magic, but I don’t want a friend of mine to succumb to demons.” He was calming down, visibly and audibly. They had both become very agitated.

Hawke nodded. “See, the good thing about this whole no-magic deal is that I don’t really attract demons.” She couldn’t help a grin. “I leave the Fade alone, and the Fade leaves me alone. It’s easy.”

“If you say so…” She noticed that he looked exhausted. She nearly felt sorry for him. Nearly.

“You’ll better go now,” she said, surprisingly calm again.

He nodded and turned to open the door. “I hope we didn’t wake your mother.”

Hawke walked into the hall and opened the main door.

“She’ll survive it even if we did. Take care.”

Anders just nodded at her, then he vanished into the grey night of Lowtown.

Hawke closed the door and just stood there for a while, one hand on the massive door handle, the other bracing her body against the wood. This had been even more draining than she would have thought. She didn’t want to think anymore; she didn’t want to remember. The best thing would be to just go to the Hanged Man and get properly drunk. But she was sure that the twins at least would notice that she was out of sorts. But she did not want to just go to bed either…

She turned around when she heard a door opening. Her mother stood in the doorway to her bedroom and looked at her, frowning like only a person you woke up from deep slumber could frown.

“What was that about?” her mother asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Hawke walked over to her, shaking her head before she kissed her mother’s temple. “It’s nothing, mother. Just a little… amicable quarrel. It’s nothing. Go back to bed.”

Her mother yawned and put one arm around her neck, pulling her oldest – and tallest – child down to kiss her cheek. “How come you’re not with your siblings? They wanted to go to the tavern, didn’t they?”

Hawke smiled fondly. She just couldn’t not smile when her mother’s voice sounded so sleepy. There was something vulnerable, something precious about her that made her want to protect her. She wondered if her father had seen this vulnerability too. “I’ll go right away, mother. Now come on, go back to bed.”

Her mother nodded, yawning again – Hawke wondered if she would even remember this little conversation tomorrow – and let her arm slip off of Hawke’s shoulder. “Don’t let the twins drink too much, Marian.”

“Don’t worry,” she muttered while she ushered her mother back into her bedroom.

She closed the door behind her and turned to face the entrance again. She just couldn’t forget what Anders had said about her father. The mere thought that somebody could call what he had done, what he had let her do ‘wrong’… She shook her head again to defuse the anger rising anew inside of her. She quickly left the house, heading straight to the Hanged Man. She really needed a drink…

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first (and fundamental) fanfiction of my Muscle over Magic series; for more information about the series, please check out the overview page.
> 
> I'm very curious to see people's reactions to this fanfic (and the whole class-fuckery I did here), so I'd be very grateful for comments :)


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